A lovely story about Oscar the cat curling up with dying patients. I skipped through to the end, where the concluding comment seemed paradoxically and coldly mechanistic: “the human component is very new to this machine, lets see how long it can remain useful”. I don’t see how this kind of mechanistic language improves on Descartes. Personally I prefer elan vital! I did find the reflections on different species capabilities interesting though.

I couldn’t find a way to edit the above once I’d posted it. Apologies if it sounds a bit grumpy! I found the ending quite a let down. Hopefully we can find room for very different approaches to animism. :).